“I’ll help you, but only to save Diego,” I said. “Promise you’ll never come back here.”
“I can’t.” His expression hardened as his voice dropped. “Consider this a lesson—never trade your life for someone else’s.”
I backed away slowly, turned, and went to the safe. Amongst the papers, I found the small metal box I needed. I popped it open, took out a key, and stilled with a bang from the next room. If security was breaking down the door, then Diego must not have been able to let them in. I quickly prayed he was still alive.
I hurried to the closet that held my mother’s party dresses. They were heavy enough that I had to use both hands to push them apart so I could crawl through them. “In here,” I said.
Against the closet’s back wall, I felt around for a keyhole. It was dark, but my father had walked me through this plenty of times. There were tunnels under the house all the security knew about, including Cristiano, but this secret passageway was only for my parents and me. When I’d pointed out to Papá that the men who’d built it must’ve known about it, he’d exchanged a grim look with my mother and changed the subject.
I put the key into the hole, but it was already unlocked. I slid the wall open to reveal a dark, dank room. “There.”
If Cristiano was surprised, he didn’t show it. “There what?”
I pointed to a trapdoor inside. “Go down that hole. There are no lights; you’ll have to feel your way.”
He stared into the dark. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“It’s your only choice.”
He got closer, his presence looming tall. “Open it for me.”
It wasn’t a request. Fortunately, my father had ensured that I knew the escape drill well, so entering the small space wasn’t foreign to me.
I squatted down to unlatch the trapdoor that led to the one passageway nobody else knew about. Cristiano closed and bolted the door behind himself, extinguishing everything but a sliver of the closet’s warm light.
I hoisted open the hatch and it fell with a hard thud against the ground. I concentrated on keeping my voice steady. “This also connects to the tunnels the mules use,” I explained. “But if you stay to the left, that’s a way nobody else knows about. It will take you south.”
“To where?”
I glanced back at him. “That’s all my parents told me.”
The dark turned him into a shadow as he stalked toward me. “I’ll have to take you with me.”
“What?”
“We’re going down there together.”
I backed away, but since he blocked the door, there wasn’t anywhere to go. “Why?”
He tucked the White Monarch into his waistband with his other gun, grabbed my arm, and yanked me toward the entrance of the tunnel. I flew forward, no match for his strength. My heart leapt into my throat as everything happened in a flash. He couldn’t take me. He wouldn’t. Nobody dared cross my father—but Cristiano already had, and now, he had nothing left to lose. If he got me into that tunnel, I’d never return. Never see Diego again. My father. I wouldn’t attend my mother’s funeral.
“I helped you,” I said as more sobs bubbled up into my throat. I looked down the ladder. Since we were on the second floor, one push would send me flying some five meters down into the pitch dark. “Why are you doing this?”
“To show you that you can’t trust anyone. Not me, not Diego, maybe not even your parents. Just because you help someone doesn’t mean they won’t betray you.” He turned toward the ladder. “And because I need a head start. Get on my back.”
Once he released me, I switched into high gear. Perhaps he was known for his ruthlessness, but I’d spent my short life sneaking into places I shouldn’t, surprising even the stealthiest of my father’s guards. I grasped the White Monarch from his pants and stumbled back, leveling the pistol on him with both hands.
With the light at my back, I saw a hint of amusement flash in his eyes. “You don’t know true fear, little girl. It puts you in danger.”
I did know fear. I was staring at my mother’s murderer. I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t hear over the deafening pounding of my heart.
Wherever Cristiano surfaced, my father would kill him.
Or I could save him the trouble and do it myself.
For the first time since I’d tripped over my mother’s dying body, calmness fell over me. Nobody had been able to stop Cristiano—not my mother or father, not Diego, and not security. I could, though. He deserved to die for his sins.
I urged myself to act, but something Cristiano had said stopped me. There is no justice. Was I sure, down to my very core, that he had done this? What if he hadn’t? I didn’t know him nearly as well as I did Diego. Cristiano was fourteen years older than me—a man. Despite his reputation as a cold-blooded killer, he had always treated me with kindness.